You know you have made it in your music career when you are asked to play a homeless drug addict musician on an episode of “CSI: NY.”

The alley is an honor.

To boot, Train lead singer Patrick Monahan got to play opposite Kim Kardashian, whose husband would later be egotist rapper Kanye West.

“She had already been there for a few days before I was there, so she was very comfortable,” Monahan said of Kardashian on the CSI Files website. “She has about 3 million Twitter followers, so I think she was Tweeting in between scenes. I was just kind of nervous.”

On the “CSI: NY” segment, Monahan got to croon the soon-to-be platinum hit “Hey, Soul Sister” with members of Train from their album “Save Me, San Francisco.” In late winter 2009, you couldn’t touch Train. The Grammy-winning “Hey, Soul Sister” became the top-selling song on the iTunes Store in 2010.

Zoom ahead nine years and Kardashian is still a star (if you don’t believe it, ask President Donald Trump) and Monahan is still the singer and last remaining founding member of Train.

Monahan will be front and center when Train makes its first headlining stop in Tallahassee on Thursday night as guest of honor at the amphitheater in Cascades Park. Tallahassee pop-punk band Brightside will open the show.

Monahan is a regular bloke

Hailing from Erie, Pennsylvania, Monahan grew up as the youngest of seven kids in an Irish family. He went to college a few miles down Interstate 79 at Edinboro University before hooking up with the cover bands Rogues Gallery and Xit. The scar on his chin is from a car crash when he was only 17.

When he sang with Rogues from 1988 to 1990, and later in the hair band Xit, around Erie, he liked to belt tunes by Led Zeppelin. Monahan has always been a fan of Robert Plant, as is evident in the charity album “Train Does Led Zeppelin II” in 2016.

In the early ‘90s during the bar circuit days, Monahan met Dave Shelley, the guitarist for Cher. He’s the one who recognized Monahan’s vocal chops and lyric ability, so he told Monahan to head to San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Monahan, 48, moved west in his 20s, where he quickly hooked up with guitarist Rob Hotchkiss on the coffee-house circuit. It did not take long before Train was formed with other players in 1994 in the Bear State. It was not easy at first.

They were rejected in 1996 by Columbia Records, home to Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. After the members of Train coughed up $25,000 for their self-titled, self-produced debut, they suddenly got plenty of attention when “Meet Virginia” became a hit. The album went platinum. Columbia signed them in 1998.

“It was too weird and too new,” Monahan told Huffpost in 2017. “And it was not something that was on the radio. A ukulele and a vocal, that was weird, too. I think it was a weird lyric. And I think the guitar part was so weird, too. Everybody’s like, ‘I think I’m going to be a guitar player from now on.’ It wasn’t that complicated.”

Here comes ‘Drops of Jupiter’

The group’s second album in 2001 was called “Drops of Jupiter,” named after the title song by Monahan following the death of his mother from cancer. It was a huge hit. The title song won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Song as well as a Grammy Award for Best Arrangement (which was done by the same guy who did string arrangements for early Elton John).

"It's going to be hard for me to beat 'Drops of Jupiter.' I've been trying to beat that song since 2000, so for (more than) 15 years I've been trying to figure out how to write that song again," Monahan told Penn Live. "My favorite line that I can think of is 'plane old Jane told a story about a man who was too afraid to fly so he never did land.'"

The success of the smash single and the platinum-selling album took its toll on the band.

“Guys like Ed Sheeran, it seems it comes naturally, but for me, it isn’t easy (to write a hit),” Monahan told Confidential in Austalia in 2017. “Every song that’s been on the radio has been a huge surprise to me.”

The song “Calling All Angels” (no, not the Jane Sieberry) received mixed reviews from music critics. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly handed the song a B+ and dubbed it "an anthemic hymn to commitment ... that builds steadily to a gloriously clanging climax." Matt Lee of the BBC was not as kind and called it "pedestrian, the vocals soulless, even more so than the band's biggest hit single, ’Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me).’”

Everyone is a critic.

Monahan has shrugged it all off. He is kept busy with his solo efforts (he recently recorded with Hall & Oates), his affordable wine company and his fans.

On Facebook, in his blog, he wrote: “No more pictures. Just a place in your brain that you want to be. No more comparisons just you thinking in vision. Be there. Take a breath. Stay there. Listen. OK now become that. Breathe. Listen for the ocean. Breathe again. Slow your mind. Be at a Train concert. Slow your heart. Be on stage. Are you on stage? Now freeze! Close your eyes. Is this the best moment ever? This is my life.”